Cell Phone Viruses

July 15, 2004 5:56 PM

When mobile phones attackget attacked. Articles posted on The Guardian and Reuters today are reporting that mobile phones running on the Symbian OS in Moscow are being targeted by a non-malicious virus/worm named Cabir.
Only 49 phones have been infected so far by the worm which propagates via Bluetooth. The creators are 29A labs, a "group of virus writers from the Czech Republic and Slovakia who pride themselves in creating "proof of concept malicious viruses,"
Countdown to impending doom in..5..4..3..
posted by Lizc (8 comments total)

And this whole time everyone had been calling me crazy when I would receive random error-notice-causing unopenable emails to my mobile.
posted by Lizc at 5:58 PM on July 15, 2004

Previous discussion on this topic.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 6:00 PM on July 15, 2004

As a proud non-owner of a mobile phone, I just have one thing to say.
posted by Johnny Assay at 6:28 PM on July 15, 2004

Eep! I'm sorry. I searched for pervious topics, but this joke virus fpp didn't come to mind. From what I remembered of the previous post, people were more concerned with Joyce and not the Cabir virus.
posted by Lizc at 7:37 PM on July 15, 2004

It's a good thing viruses like this in particular are made. You would rather an underground hacking group collect credit card numbers instead?
posted by Keyser Soze at 8:36 PM on July 15, 2004

Assuming, of course, in the light of proving this flaw, a revision is made and distributed.
posted by Keyser Soze at 9:16 PM on July 15, 2004

nothing to see here people, move along . . .

cabir is a 'proof in concept worm' that might reduce your battery life if you are one of the dozens of people to get infected.

but this is an interesting post in that it surfaces some off the geopolitics of the mobile industry.

recently a consultancy in the UK released a report that bascially argued that open OS phones (like Symbian) were a threat to operator revenue because people could, like, you know, put applications/ringtones/content etc on the phone that was outside of the operator revenue stream/walled garden.

so it will be interesing to watch the hype machine re: mobile viruses . . .. ask yourself if the concern is about a threat to the consumer or the mobile operator business model
posted by donovan at 11:02 PM on July 15, 2004

and i must add: I am apparently a bad speller (though in my heart of hearts I don't want to accept that)
posted by donovan at 11:10 PM on July 15, 2004